Aff warlock is badly designed

[Bbilibili-illidan]

Aff is almost unplayable without proper WeakAuras(WA) support. There are so many things to be monitored. 3/4 dots, shadow embrace, haunted, malefic affliction, etc. It makes my eyes hurt without a good WA. Devs should make an effort to simplify the rotation. MAKE WA AN OPTION NOT A MUST!

[Ojoverde-eldrethalas (Ojoverde)]

all that buttons and your damage still suck! yeah affliction suck badly.

[Aedred-stormrage]

You’re not wrong.

I had to use an addon to track 5 dots and 2 buffs. It was so chaotic just refreshing dots and trying to get a drain out to maintain shadow embrace while ensuring I used MR but not too much to ensure I could keep up Dread Touch that is was a massively unenjoyable experience. Not fun … at all.

Tried swapping out Siphon Life for AbsCorr but the impact on dps was waaaaay too much and then I didn’t have enough to do.

Honestly, so many of the toons I play now have massively chaotic gameplay that I’m not enjoying the game. Gave up on my spriest and mage … about to shelve the balance druid (feels like affliction trying to maintain 3 dots) … ugh.

[Freshdrive-bronzebeard]

I know its alot to keep up at once, but thats what i like about it. The problem is when you get it all perfect and still way under the dps curve thats what sucks.

[Drednaught-remulos]

The AC / Siphon talent is a mess all on its own. Select the AC talent and you get to manage 1 instant cast dot or 3 if you choose SL. IMO it would make more sense to have the choice of making Corruption permanent or having Corruption also apply and refresh SL on cast.

This would make the Dot and debuf management less of a PITA on single target, and make it a lot less GCD intensive to cleave or multi target.
It might also help if there was an auto refresh for >3 stacks of Malefic Affliction on one of the dots (Agony or UA perhaps)

[Nespheok-area-52]

If the rotation’s complexity yielded some insane numbers then yeah it’d be warranted; As it stands though it’s just a button bloat of trickle damage (pve -wise at least)

[Drednaught-remulos]

The problems being experienced now are not new. The insanity that was Cata warlock gameplay reminds me of where we are now to some extent.
I was reminded of a post from that time that discussed the extreme levels of complexity and how it related to the capacity for the human brain to deal with multiple tasks in short term memory.

If interested search ‘warlock-complexity-and-the-magic-number’ (Can’t post a link here)

This is an old article, but may help explain why a few people can do well and others struggle. It is about the Cata warlock, but I suspect the same issues apply for some players in the current version.

Edit : This is not only about the spells and abilities, all the other things that need to be done also add complexity (Don’t stand in bad, move in/out, perform X action etc)

[Donerick-stormrage]

@Nespheok-area-52

If the rotation’s complexity yielded some insane numbers then yeah it’d be warranted

They don’t want this though. That was clear when they hard gutted feral at the start of legion and then making the comment “difficulty of a class does not mean it should be top dps” lmao

Meanwhile you got specs that can be played with an apple watch destroying the meters with ease.

There is such a huge disconnect with these devs.

[Nespheok-area-52]

@Donerick-stormrage

Meanwhile you got specs that can be played with an apple watch destroying the meters with ease.

Been a bit since i’ve burst out laughing… so true.
I miss Legion affliction, it had a simplicity to it… but also a way to master it that went abit beyond that (in raids anyway)

[Sniperman-sargeras]

Legion affliction was the worst design ever, only minority liked the UA stacking style

[Nespheok-area-52]

worse than it currently is ?! I’d put my money in legion aff any day

[Sniperman-sargeras]

I personally prefer the current version over the legion one.

[Nespheok-area-52]

I could respect that opinion.
I just hate how blizzard shows little logic in balancing how the spec currently performs…
I hope they come around though, sooner rather than later

[Scynox-remulos]

The solution seems to be to force a couple of Blizzard employees to play Affliction for a day (I know, tall order), and then get them to write down some ideas on how to improve its gameplay/tree. Get modern with some new visual effects, or perhaps interject some of the evoker’s hold type abilities. Like, if they are dead-set on having malefic rapture, why not let us hold down the button to improve the damage and make the visual more dramatic at the cost of more soulshards, so we aren’t sitting there spamming the same lackluster ability 4 times in a row?

The goal is to get Blizzard devs to play the classes they work on because it really clearly doesn’t seem like they do; I mean, look at the Soul Swap change as evidence for that.

[Actrise-velen (Actrise)]

Yes patch after patch year after year Xpack after Xpack Aff is bad. Now SP they can fix them for PvP, M+, single target and AOE. But for some reason Aff is left in the dumpster fire.

[Eriethelie-stormrage]

If the work that goes with the upkeep of the spec resulted in arcane levels of damage, I’d be okay with it. Except it is not the case. And also you have no AoE, even if you spec in it.

[Shredow-wyrmrest-accord]

Let's be honest. Malefic Rapture sucks

When will blizzard learn that spamming hard cast spells is horrible spec design for affliction? Very few people liked spamming UA in Legion so their solution is to introduce a different soul shard dump spell that we have to sit and cast for upwards of twelve seconds while maintaining dots and debuffs on our target. Great, really fun gameplay. Affliction will never be a fun or intuitive spec to play so long as Blizzard refuses to redesign Malefic Rapture away from being a hard cast spam spell. I…

People arguing about Legion vs Current are being silly. If I had to chose between Legion and current Aff Warlock I’d choose neither. I want something similar to MoP Aff Warlock back. It’s the best the spec ever was. Cata sucked, and MoP fixed it. Since then they’ve been dragging us backwards to Cata’s issues with the class.

The spec needs to be gutted and redesigned away from having ANY kind of spell that you sit and spam during a CD window. It’s bad spec design. It isn’t fun to play. And it’s impossible to balance.

[Methyyl-barthilas]

I enjoy the complexity of warlocks, unfortunately in it’s current state mastering the complexity is not rewarding us (high damage), so it feels really $#@&.

Jump on an enhance shaman and press the buttons that glow and you’ll out dps a warlock by 20-30k.

Whoever is leading class balancing is clueless. If things don’t change, majority of the playerbase will just be playing melee classes that only have to worry about a couple of buttons.

[Bullëtproof-zuljin]

Going back over the logs from last nite, I found that I parsed purple on a fight and did 14K less DPS than a Rogue parsing grey.

Same ilvl.

But hey, I win most trash packs and that’s really important…right? RIGHT?!?!

[Aeuss-arygos]

Come on!! The gave 'locks a 4% percentage boost to Harvester of Souls, and THEN nerfed Summon Soulkeeper by 90%! What more could anyone want?? They are so detached from the game it’s pathetic. Those Devs need to go.